The present invention relates in general to an unattended automatic contract reception system and more specifically to such an unattended automatic contract reception system that a user can make a contract of financial business with a financial organization through an unattended automatic contract machine.
Recently, in Japan, Korea, and other Asian countries, the unattended automatic contract machines have been highly evaluated by the users as a new financial service in the multimedia age. This is probably because of their highly functional and user-friendly operability and consideration of the users' privacy. The enterprise side also can enjoy various advantages, because they can largely save personnel expenses and do not have to start out with large shops but only with small ones used exclusively for unattended automatic contract reception, to capture a lot of clients. With this, demands for the unattended automatic contract machine are expected to increase more and more not only in Japan but also worldwide.
Such unattended automatic contract machines are generally used in an unattended automatic contract reception system such as shown in FIG. 5.
An unattended automatic contract reception system comprises an unattended automatic contract machine (hereinafter called a client terminal) 10 and a monitor or surveillance terminal 40 installed on the side of a host enterprise connected with this client terminal 10 via a communication line 20, so that the monitor terminal 40 can monitor and confirm various unattended contract applications, for example, those for a users' financial dealing which is made via the client terminal 10.
For this purpose, the client terminal 10 comprises: a Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) 11 equipped with a touch panel which permits a user (client) to enter prescribed contract data; a camera 12 which takes pictures, both still images and dynamic images, of the user operating the machine; a microphone 13 which picks up the user's speech; a communication control portion 14 which communicates the entered image data and the speech data; and an operation control portion 15 which controls the operations of this client terminal 10 as a whole.
Also, the monitor terminal 40 installed on the side of the host enterprise comprises: a center terminal 41 equipped with a CRT, keyboard, etc.; a communication control unit 42 which is connected with this center terminal 41 and, at the same time, transfers image and speech data with the client terminals 10 in a communication line network 20; and a headset 43 which is used by the operator (attendant) at the center terminal 41.
With such an unattended automatic contract reception system, when a user who has shown up at the client terminal 10 starts operation on the CRT11 equipped with a touch panel, the operation control portion 15 sends a "connection request" for the line to the center terminal 41. Upon receiving the "connection request" from the client terminal 10, the center terminal 41 identifies which one of the client terminals 10 in the communication line network 20 has sent that "connection request." Based on the identification results, the center terminal 41 instructs the communication control unit 42 to establish a line connection with the client terminal 10 that asked for that "connection request." According to this instruction, the communication control unit 42 establishes a line connection with the communication control portion 14 of the client terminal 10.
When the line connection is established between the communication control unit 42 and the communication control portion 14, the communication control portion 14 at the client terminal 10 sends both the image data obtained with the camera 12 and the speech data obtained with the microphone 13, to the communication control unit 42 via the communication line network 20.
Then, the communication control unit 42 gives an overlay display (window display) of the received image data in an area 41a on the CRT screen at the center terminal 41 and, at the same time, sends out the received speech data to the headset 43.
In such a type of an unattended automatic contract reception system, the image data and the speech data (hereinafter called client data collectively) of a client utilizing the client terminal 10 will thus be sent out from the side of the monitor terminal 40, so that its operator can monitor the situation of the user at the client terminal 10.
In the above-mentioned conventional unattended automatic contract reception systems, however, each center terminal 41 is connected with only one communication control unit 42. This is because the center terminal 41 can output (control) only the image data from one communication control unit 42 at a time. This holds true not only with the center terminal 41 but also with the headset 43.
In an unattended automatic contract reception system, however, generally a plurality of client terminals are installed in the communication line network 20. Therefore, the center terminal 41, which can control only one communication control unit 42 at a time, has to switch, as required, its line connection to each of a plurality of client terminals to cope with them during monitoring. Moreover, this operation must be carried out manually through the keyboard etc. by the operator at the center terminal 41.
The conventional unattended automatic contract reception systems, therefore, place a heavy burden on the operator at the center terminal 41 when he attempts to use only one center terminal 41 to monitor the operational situation of a plurality of client terminals. This may lead to a lot of mistakes in operation.